The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.

Console: Nintendo 3DS

Genre: RPG

Release Date: November 22nd, 2013

Date Reviewed: December 27th, 2013

Gameplay:

LOZ: A Link Between Worlds is the newest game added to the Zelda series. A Link Between Worlds is a direct sequel to A Link to the Past for the SNES. After many long years they finally decided to do a sequel to the original. A Link Between Worlds is pure gold and is a must own for everyone. The game is like the original where the camera is a top view camera of Link. It does an excellent job as staying to it's roots from the original with the camera view, the enemies, the temples, and you are in the exact world from A Link to the Past. You start off by sleeping in of coarse and the Blacksmith's son comes to wake you up because you are late as usual for work. When you arrive to the blacksmith's shop he is talking to someone very important. As soon as the important figure leaves the blacksmith proceeds to give you trouble for being so late. After he finished yelling at you he notices that the man forgot his sword. Your errand is to find the man and give him is sword. From this point on, your adventure begins. A Link Between Worlds uses the 3DS extremely well. The game runs at a smooth 60 frames per second with no FPS drops at all. The biggest feature I love about this game is you can do the temples in any order you choose. You don't find your items in the dungeon anymore such as the bow or hook shot. Instead you can rent out all of the items or purchase them for yourself with rupees. This is a very smart thing to be added to the game because with this feature, the game allows you to do any of the temples in any order you choose. There is not a wrong way of doing things. This makes the world feel very open.

The Shop where you buy/rent items!

 

Each temple is fun with clever boss mechanics in each temple. Some of the bosses are beyond easy but what do you expect in a Zelda game now. There will always be a few easy ones. As you progress you discover that you can go into an alternate Hyrule. This place is called Lorule that is ruled by Zelda's counterpart Hilda. In order to access this world you are able to turn into a painting and walk along walls into tears which teleports you into Lorule. Although the overworld is largely the same as that of A Link to the Past, all the dungeons are totally new. Exploration of dungeons utilize the game's 3D effects and feature Link jumping between levels to solve puzzles and advance. It feels very smooth when you transition into new areas.

Like in previous Zelda titles there are always collectable items to be found. When you find all of the babies you get a new attack for your sword. Every time you return 12 at a time the mother will upgrade any of your items of your choosing to make them more powerful. Rupees are much more important in this game because you have to buy the items and they are not cheap. However, rupees are extremely easy to find and add up quickly.

2D Painting of yourself!  

Overall the gameplay is truly remarkable. It has a lot of nostalgia for the old fans and well as some new ones for people who started the series later on. This game has something for everyone. The world is huge, lots to explore, lots of puzzles, and collectables. All of these encourage the play to explore both worlds of Hyrule and Lorule.

Graphics:
The game follows the top-down two-dimensional gameplay of various Zelda games, especially A Link to the Past, though it is now presented with stereoscopic 3D graphics when played on the Nintendo 3DS. The top screen is used as the main screen, while the bottom touch screen contains the map, gear, and items. The loading screen consists of a black screen with a Triforce in the lower right corner. It runs smoothly at 60 FPS with new reduce in frames anywhere in the game. It is very colourful, the environments are large and very beautiful and full of life.

Comparison.

Sound:
The game features slightly updated sound effects from A Link to the Past. The music tracks are arrangements of the originals. In addition to the music from A Link to the Past, the Streetpass battle mode of the game includes two remixed and rearranged versions of the Temple Theme from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. The Streetpass mode is inspired by the final "Shadow Link" boss fight from the NES game. It sounds fantastic and has a lot of nostalgia while just listening to the music.

Conclusion:
A Link Between Worlds is a highly recommend, must own game for the Nintendo 3DS. It is one of the best Zelda games ever created. New fans and old fans alike will find something they love about this game. Whether it be the nostalgia, music, graphics, or game play in general, people will find something they love about it. This game provides a lot to do and you can do it in any order you choose to. Fantastic, I hope to see more. Also, when you beat the game, test your skill in Hero Mode.

Overall Score:

10/10

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Alien 3

Well I decided to do a review on Alien 3 for the NES. Just recently I had watched the third Alien movie, Alien 3 in the Quadrilogy. The Alien Universe has been a favorite of mine since I was a little guy. I kind of looked up to the marines, because they were so bad*ss. Well in Alien 3, Lt. Ellen Ripley was the main character, as is the same in this game. So now it is time to see how this game lives up to the movie... As we all know movies make bad games, and games make bad movies...

[PS Forgive me for my bad screenshots, I will need to invest in something better than MSPaint]

WOW THIS TITLE SCREEN IS SO WICKED! ITS EPIC AND AWESOME!!
To start off you can see the title screen is a joke... This is gonna be a fun review. 

 Gameplay/Controls:
First off I was kind of confused about how Ripley starts off on the surface of a planet armed with a Pulse Rifle. I love how this game already starts off completely messed up. In the movie Alien 3 Ripley crash lands on the planet Fiorina 'Fury' 161, an old foundry which is used as a prison. I can see how it kind of looks likes a foundry on the first opening scene, but aliens running around on the surface? Come on. This games controls are horrid. Completely garbage, like I mean, you can’t even aim up and shoot the aliens in the ceiling? You can throw grenades which is kind of cool, but you throw them like a handicapped sloth. The grenades, they get tossed about 3 feet in front of you. Last time I checked the shrapnel and the shock would probably kill you at that range.

The other thing that is frustrating about this games gameplay is it’s a race against the clock to save people who were face hugged? Either way you save someone after they have been face hugged their dead anyways. As there is no technology to cryo-freeze them to keep them alive until the embryo of the Alien was removed. Another thing how does Ripley have access to grenades and weapons to begin with? In the movie there were no fire arms, explosives etc. The other thing I have beef with is that, why does this game suck so bad? Well continue reading on.

The controls are horrid like I stated earlier. You jump like your slam dunking a basketball. You fall down when you get hit by an alien, than you teleport back into the standing position. Thats orignial. You can also get knocked down the ladders by the aliens too. In which you lay there, than teleport back into standing position. Also where are all the prisoners in like in the movie to help you kill the hybrid "Runner" alien? So this game is completely wrong!  How is there multiple "Aliens" in this game? The game is called "Alien 3" aka single not plural! In later levels I suppose you fight "Praetorian" or "Warrior" Aliens due to them being bigger and more bad*ss than the smaller ones. Not to mension theres eggs and facehuggers in the game, which would claim there is a queen laying eggs and the drones are doing their job. This game should have been called Aliens because it follows the the second Alien installment, you guessed it, "Aliens".

Like I had stated, the controls are horrible, and the gameplay is the same thing over and over.

Ellen Ripley I knew she was tall. Nice jumping girl, looks like your doing an ad for some nice Nike Air Jordans. This is the famous "jump" I was talking about. SLAM DUNK!!

[Trivia Time! In the Director’s cut of Alien 3, a facehugger actually impregnates some sort of bovine creature. Than when the alien is born, it gains some of the DNA structure of its host. Thus replicating a stature, or structure of its host. In most cases we see drones which are usually spawned from human hosts. Minus the one which was born in the way a human gives birth in Alien Resurrection. In other cases such as Alien VS Predator, and AVP 2: Requiem [The Movies] At the end of the first AVP, this theory is proven correct once again, as there is a Hybrid Alien; the Pred-Alien. Also the Theatrical release of Alien 3, the facehugger gets a hold of a dog instead of the bovine.]

As you can see, its that god awful RED again! [Note to those who do not know, I am colorblind, thus making the "red" appear like a shade of orange+pink]

DO A BARREL ROLL!! Ripley as she falls down a bunch of random broken catwalks?

Graphics/Background:

Wow so entertaining, the game looks drier than, well I don’t even know. The screens before each level begins suck too. Well the graphics seem ok for this game. It’s nothing special at all. The flamethrowers flame animation looks like complete garbage. The animation of Ripley tumbling down off of things is well done, but too bad it does nothing to help out the gameplay at all. The aliens look decent for their sprites being like one shade of color, and all the explosion animations look like crap. Nothing much else to say about this other than the background has random black holes in the walls in the first stage. This was over used waaaaay too much. They could have at least used a few different sets of backgrounds instead of the same thing over and over and over again. Not to mension Ripley looks like a employee of a santation department for a city. Aka Garbageman.

The detail on the alien looks ok. This the the screen before a the first level begins...

BGM/SFX:

Well I never thought I would say this, but this games music is ok. Aside from all the other crap, the sounds are somewhat decent. You can tolerate it for the most part. The BGM isn’t that bad, the SFX are ok, and the guns sound something like they should. All in all nothing special at all.

Uniqueness/Creativity:

Like I said before I started this review. Games make bad movies, movies make bad games. It seems this is a true statement. Look at the terminator movies, the games all stunk more than rotten egg farts and beer, same with the movie Doom. The Doom games were way better than the movie. At least the Doom movie had some ideas from the games, mainly the third one but not all of them. This is why Alien 3 on the NES gets its balls busted due to it following nothing from the movie Alien 3.

Closing thoughts/Statements:

All in all this game is bad. Waste of time. I wish I had the 3 hours back that I wasted on this game to review a different game, but this is what I enjoy doing. Saving people from wasting their time on bad games like this. In all of my reviews, I do my best to either beat the game, or get damn near close to it. This game I got fed up with saving people who are doomed anyways. I took one for the team and played this horrid, putrid pile of turds... 

I guess the Aliens won because I did not finish this game. Bow down to them. All our base are belong to them!!

Here goes...

Castlevania 1 (NES)

  

Well here is my first review on what some say is a great installment on some old classic NES games. This is the first installment of three on the NES. To my knowledge you are some dude named Simon Belmont and you have a whip, which later powers up to a flail. Your one bad*ss who enjoys slapping ghouls, ghosts, bats, cats, rats, and whatever else gets in your way. So here we go!

Gameplay/Controls:

I like the idea of power ups being hidden in some blocks, kind of like Mario Brothers. You can break the random candles on the walls for hearts, money bags, and also find certain items. Each item has a unique purpose, at a cost of 1 heart each use. (Nothing is free!) An example of a great weapon on the first boss is the axes. The axes can be lobbed to help you kill the boss, a flying bat. Each item can be utilized in certain areas to help you out, but at other times be completely useless. For a prime example, you get the Blue bottle, (seems like a Molotov cocktail) and you toss it on the ground and it makes a flame. That is extremely useful against flying enemies. (Sarcasm) In that case, the Cross, (acts as a boomerang) would be more useful in that situation. Another one of Simon's power ups look like a flail which you can get to increase your whips damage and range, are quite easy to stumble upon. Without some of these you would be dead meat in some situations.

I like the idea of ascending and descending on the stairs. This is quite a unique function to have for a game of this time (1986 on the Family Computer Disk System in Japan, which was ported to the NES Cartridge in North America in 1987.) Alot of older games were more simple than this game, I can see why for its time it was a favorite among many NES gamers.

The controls seem a bit sluggish, as in when you need to be critical in timing all the time. There seems to be no midair control at all. Those flying horsehead Medusa things that knock you off ledges and downstairs, you need to be critical in hitting those. It almost seems that they will always knock you off a ledge so that you die. One of the flaws I have noticed in the overall gameplay is that, if you proceed up a set of stairs, and get knocked back down them, you die! It’s as if you fall into a bottomless pit and just, well, die. Maybe Simon falls down and cracks his skull open how do we know?

Graphics/Background:

The graphics for this game are not too shabby. They seem to utilize the color red a lot. Then again this game is older than I am by 2 years! Majority of the other backgrounds are well done.The Enemies all have a unique look which is good. They do not seem to recycle the sprites which is good. Many of the older games do this which is a lazy game designer’s way out. I am colorblind so the colors always mess with me. Red/Blue/Greens are the worst for me. So the red backgrounds, as I am told, really mess with my eyes. These older games really rack a toll on my sight after gaming them, but all in all this games Graphics are not too shabby!

The axes, best for slaying this Bloodsucking Rat!

This is the "Red" color I am talking about!

BGM/SFX:

 The music for this game is alright. It gets annoying after a while though. The SFX when you collect things is pretty cool; it makes you want to collect more and more items. The sound of the whip is pretty accurate for the age of this game. The noise it makes when enemies die is ok too. Makes kind of like a boom noise. The other thing that is annoying about when you die is it’s almost like the Price is Right jingle they play when you die. It gives you that sense of feeling that you’re a failure, you suck, and you need to end it NOW. Why even keep trying? All in all this games Sound and SFX are pretty solid.

Uniqueness/Creativity:

I might catch some flak here but this game is very much like a typical Dracula/Zombie/Undead killing game. There is some superstition in the background of this game with the crosses and such. This game probably is one of the best side scrolling games for its time. The adventure aspect of it is quite good too. I also give this game thumbs up for the stairs being implemented and being functional. This is why it is set apart from other side scrollers where you can only jump on blocks to ascend or descend.

Closing thoughts/Statements:

All in all I give the first Castlevania credit for being a solid game for its time. It’s not a bad game, it’s just the controls are clunky and sluggish. If the controls were a little more responsive, the game would have been a lot better. I would strongly suggest this game to anyone with a love for sidescrolling good old ghoul bashing madness!